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NO REDD+! in Rio+20: A declaration to decolonise the earth and the sky

“Against Amazonian Genocide. Xingu (Afro-Brazilian freedom fighter) Lives Forever.” Photo by Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project. This photo was taken during the People's March through Rio on June 20, 2012, and first appeared at Climate Connections.

June 19, 2012 -- REDD-Monitor -- Last week, the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change against REDD and for Life held a press conference
denouncing REDD and the green economy. The press conference was part of
the People’s Summit, a nine-day event taking place in parallel to the
UN Rio+20 conference.

“How can you sell the air?, “How can you sell Mother Earth and Father Sky?”, asked Marlon Santi of the Ecuadorian Amazon at the press conference.
Berenice Sanchez of the Nahua People of Mexico added, “Not only does
REDD+ corrupt the sacred and fuel financial speculation, it also serves
as greenwash for extractive industries like Shell and Rio Tinto.”

The press conference launched the Global Alliance’s declaration opposing REDD (posted below in English, and available in Spanish and Portuguese).

* * *

NO REDD+! in Rio+20: A declaration to decolonize the earth and the sky

By the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change against REDD+

After more than 500 years of resistance, we, Indigenous Peoples,
local communities, peasant farmers, fisherfolk and civil society are not
fooled by the so-called Green Economy and REDD+ because we know
colonialism when we see it. Regardless of its cynical disguises and
shameful lies, colonialism always results in the rape and pillaging of
Mother Earth, and the slavery, death, destruction and genocide of her
peoples.[1] Rio+20’s Green Economy and REDD+ constitute a thinly-veiled, wicked, colonialist planet grab[2] that we oppose, denounce and resist. Rio+20 is not an Earth Summit, it is the WTO of Life.

Just as historically the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify
the first wave of colonialism by alleging that Indigenous Peoples did
not have souls, and that our territories were “terra nullius,” land of
nobody,[3] now the Green Economy and REDD+ are inventing similarly dishonest premises to justify this new wave of colonialization[4]
and privatization of nature. Indigenous Peoples and peasants are being
killed, forcibly relocated, criminalized, and blamed for climate
change.[5] Our land is being labeled “unused,”[6] “degraded”[7] or in need of “conservation”[8] and “reforestation,”[9] to justify massive land grabs[10] for REDD+, carbon offset projects and biopiracy.[11]

But what exactly is the Green Economy and REDD+? The Green Economy is nothing more than capitalism of nature;[12] a perverse attempt by corporations,[13] extractive industries[14]
and governments to cash in on Creation by privatizing, commodifying,
and selling off the Sacred and all forms of life and the sky, including
the air we breathe, the water we drink and all the genes, plants,
traditional seeds, trees, animals, fish, biological and cultural
diversity, ecosystems and traditional knowledge that make life on Earth
possible and enjoyable.[15]

The Green Economy is the umbrella for all kinds of ways to sell nature including REDD+,[16] the Clean Development Mechanism,[17] carbon trading,[18] PES (Payment for Environmental Services),[19] the financialization of nature,[20] the International Regime on Access to Genetic Resources,[21] patents on life,[22] TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity),[23] natural capital,[24] green bonds,[25] species banking[26]
and state and business “partnerships” with indigenous peoples. Under
the Green Economy, even the rain, the beauty of a waterfall or a honey
bee’s pollen will be reduced to a barcode price tag[27]
and sold to the highest bidder. At the same time, the Green Economy
promotes and greenwashes environmentally and socially devastating
extractive industries like logging,[28] mining[29] and oil drilling[30] as “sustainable development.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

REDD+, like carbon trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, is a
false solution to climate change promoted by the United Nations, the
World Bank and climate criminals such as Shell[31] and Rio Tinto[32], which allows polluters to continue to burn fossil fuels and not reduce their emissions at source.[33]
Officially, REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
forest Degradation. But, REDD+ really means Reaping profits from
Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity.[34] REDD+ constitutes a worldwide land grab and gigantesque carbon offset scam.[35]

Originally, REDD just included forests and plantations, but its scope
has been expanded to include GMO trees, soils and agriculture.[36]
Ultimately, REDD+ may try to include and expropriate the entire surface
of the Earth including most of the forests, soils, fields, grasslands,
deserts, wetlands, mangroves, marine algae and oceans to use them as
sponges for industrialized countries’ pollution. REDD+ is also the
pillar of the Green Economy and has been blasphemously heralded as “the
spiritual core” of the “business plan” that the governments of the world
are writing for the planet.[37] REDD+ turns the sources of life on Earth into carbon garbage dumps;[38] it turns the planet’s wombs into tombs. But we are not going to let this happen!

Maybe the Green Economy is called green because that is the color of
the dollar and maybe REDD+ was so dubbed in anticipation of its bloody
consequences. Ask Olivia Mukamperezida, mother of Friday, an
eight-year-old boy from Uganda who, according to The New York Times,
was killed when his home was burned to the ground as over 22,000 small
farmers with land deeds were violently evicted for a carbon offset
plantation.[39]
Ask farmer Antonio Alves who was persecuted, arrested at gun point and
thrown in jail for 11 days by Força Verde, the armed guards of Chevron’s
REDD+ project in Brazil, for cutting down a tree to repair his mother’s
leaky roof.[40]
Ask Chief Daniel Jiménez of the Matsés People of the Peruvian Amazon
who had criminal charges brought against him for defending his people
against an exploitive REDD+ contract in a foreign language that gave the
carbon trader total control over the Matsés’ rainforest and way of
life, forever.[41]
Ask the Batwa Pygmy People who have suffered servitude on the World
Bank’s Ibi-Batéké Forest Carbon Plantation in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.[42]
Ask the Ngaju Dayak People of Indonesia who have denounced the
Kalimantan REDD+ project because it generates conflict and violates
their right to free, prior, informed consent[43] enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.[44]

These examples help us all see through the shameful lies and crass
propaganda that try to hide the truth about REDD+. We know that REDD+ is
not about saving the climate or protecting forests or eradicating
poverty or distributing “benefits” or empowering women. Even the United
Nations itself admits that REDD+ could result in the “lock-up of
forests,” “loss of land,” “conflict over resources,” “new risks for the
poor” and “marginalize the landless.”[45]

In fact, all the negative impacts of REDD+ that the UN foresaw are
already happening. For example, in Africa, REDD+, carbon credits,
agrofuels and export crops, are driving huge land grabs.[46]
Furthermore, since REDD+ now includes plantations and agriculture,
already existing plantations, agrofuels and export crops could soon
become carbon offset projects as well.[47] Experts are warning that three-quarters of Africa’s population and two-thirds of its land are at risk[48] and that REDD+ may create “generations of landless people.”[49] In Africa, REDD+ is emerging as a new form of colonialism,[50] economic subjugation and a driver of land grabs[51] so massive that they may constitute a continent grab.

Meanwhile, inaction on climate change, masked by false solutions like
REDD, is allowing the Earth’s temperature to rise 2 degrees or more,
which effectively melts the Artic, incinerates Africa and drowns the
Pacific.[52]
Nine countries are disappearing under the waves as the sea level rises
in the Pacific where 90% of the population is indigenous.[53] This constitutes climate racism and cultural genocide[54] on an unprecedented scale.

Unfortunately, REDD+ affects all regions of the world and all social
sectors. For peasant farmers, REDD+ constitutes a worldwide
counter-agrarian reform and perverts the task of growing food into
“farming carbon.”[55] “Climate Smart Agriculture” is not smart, it is dumb.[56]
Moreover, “climate-ready” seeds and other supposed GMO climate fixes
are just more attempts of Monsanto, the biotech industry and
agribusiness to deform, patent and control our seeds, grab our fields
and turn us into landless, indentured peons.[57]

Applying a gender analysis to REDD+, it is clear that REDD+ also
constitutes a new form of violence against women because it limits or
prohibits women’s access to the land where we farm, gather food and draw
water to feed and quench our families.[58]
Similarly, for Indigenous Peoples, REDD+ threatens our cultural
survival and is potentially genocidal since REDD+ proponents want to
expropriate and control the majority of the forests and 80% of the
world’s biodiversity, which is found in our lands and territories.[59]
For fisherfolk and coastal communities, Blue REDD, that is doing REDD+
in the oceans and the waterways, could profoundly limit our fishing,
thus undermining our sustenance and way of life.[60]
As for workers, we know that the jobs created by REDD+-type plantation
projects tend to be fewer than promised, the wages and labor conditions
poor, the right to unionize often violated and the exposure to
carcinogenic pesticides high.[61]

But REDD+ is not just destructive for adults. For children, youth and
future generations, REDD+ and other false solutions to climate change,
like large hydroelectric dams such as Belo Monte,[62] agrofuels, “clean” coal, nuclear power, natural gas, hydraulic fracturing, nanotechnology, synthetic biology,[63] bioenergy, biomass, biochar[64] and geo-engineering, endanger the future and life as we know it.[65]
Instead of helping to reduce global warming, they poison and destroy
the environment and let the climate crisis spiral exponentially, which
may render the planet almost uninhabitable.

We cannot allow false solutions to climate change like REDD+ and the
Green Economy to destroy the Earth’s balance, assassinate the seasons,
unleash severe weather havoc, privatize life and threaten the very
survival of humanity. REDD+ and the Green Economy are crimes against
humanity and the Earth. However, we refuse to be the damned of the Earth
and let the Earth be damned.

Heeding the wisdom of our elders and the prophecies of our ancestors,
we launch this call for No REDD+! in Rio+20 and invite you to join us
in planting this seed in the consciousness of the peoples of the world.
Mother Earth, wounded and racked by pollution-induced fevers, is
imploring us to change paradigms. Only a path which:

Rejects REDD+ and the Green Economy as Privatization of Nature;

Decolonizes life, land and the sky;

Defends life and liberty;

Respects human rights;

Guarantees Indigenous Peoples’ rights;

Honors Mother Earth and

Protects the Sacred,

will save the world and allow us to live well and create the “future that we want.”

[2] ^^ McAfee, Kathleen The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem Services Markets.
“Commodification and transnational trading of ecosystem services is the
most ambitious iteration yet of the strategy of ‘selling nature to save
it’. The World Bank and UN agencies contend that global carbon markets
can slow climate change while generating resources for development.
Consonant with ‘inclusionary’ versions of neoliberal development policy,
advocates assert that international payment for ecosystem services
(PES) projects, financed by carbon-offset sales and biodiversity
banking, can benefit the poor. However, the World Bank also warns that a
focus on poverty reduction can undermine efficiency in conservation
spending. The experience of ten years of PES illustrates how, in
practice, market-efficiency criteria clash directly with
poverty-reduction priorities. Nevertheless, the premises of market-based
PES are being extrapolated as a model for global REDD programmes
financed by carbon-offset trading. This article argues that the
contradiction between development and conservation observed in PES is
inevitable in projects framed by the asocial logic of neoclassical
economics. Application in international conservation policy of the
market model, in which profit incentives depend upon differential
opportunity costs, will entail a net upward redistribution of wealth
from poorer to wealthier classes and from rural regions to distant
centres of capital accumulation, mainly in the global North.”

[3] ^^ Newcomb, Steve. Five Hundred Years of Injustice.
“In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued to King Alfonso V of Portugal the bull
Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians throughout
the world, and specifically sanctioning and promoting the conquest,
colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their
territories…Under various theological and legal doctrines formulated
during and after the Crusades, non-Christians were considered enemies of
the Catholic faith and, as such, less than human. Accordingly, in the
bull of 1452, Pope Nicholas directed King Alfonso to ‘capture, vanquish,
and subdue the saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ,’ to ‘put
them into perpetual slavery,’ and ‘to take all their possessions and
property.’” Also see Davenport, Frances Gardiner, 19l7, European
Treaties bearing on the History of the United States and its
Dependencies to 1648, Vol. 1, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of
Washington.

[4] ^^ Global Justice Ecology Project, Timberwatch et al, No REDD papers, volume 1, "The REDD+ Trojan Horse".
“If REDD-style schemes are allowed to be imposed on African forestland,
fields and grasslands, it could mean the economic subjugation of the
entire continent…REDD and CDM schemes will probably be no more than a
form of re-colonisation, and the final drive to commodify the remaining
spaces of Africa left in indigenous hands after the first round of
formal colonialism.”

[6] ^^ REDD for Communities and Forests et al, A one-step guide to making the national REDD strategy more pro-poor.
“The draft National REDD strategy justifies the classification of 49 %
of forests as being on general land by stating that, ‘General Land as
used here means all public land which is not reserved or village land
including unoccupied or unused village land.’ On the same page, the
strategy also states, ‘Forests in General Land are ‘open access’,
characterized by unsecured land tenure, shifting cultivation, annual
wild fires, harvesting of wood fuel, poles and timber, and heavy
pressure for conversion to other competing land uses, such as
agriculture, livestock grazing, settlements and industrial development.
’Confusingly, in these two definitions, land that communities use for
agriculture, harvesting of wood products, grazing and even settlement is
defined as ‘unused’.”

[7] ^^The Ecologist, "Lack of forest definition ‘major obstacle’ in fight to protect rainforests".
“In the second in our series examining REDD we report how ambiguous
forest definitions are putting the future success of forest protection
schemes in doubt and allowing logging companies to destroy biodiverse
habitats – The current lack of a working definition of what degraded
forest or land is ‘plays into the hands’ of logging companies, say
forest campaigners. The companies claim to responsibly develop ‘only on
degraded land’, but in reality this can actually mean they are clearing
forests and peatlands.”

“Over 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found within
Indigenous peoples’ lands and territories Indigenous peoples represent
approximately 350 million individuals in the world and make up
approximately 90% of the world’s cultural diversity. We use our highly
specialized, traditional knowledge to care for and conserve the
interconnected web or “Circle of Life” known as “biodiversity.” Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism.

Rights and Resources International, African land grabs hinder sustainable development.
“Of the 203 million hectares of land deals reported worldwide between
2000 and 2010, two-thirds were in Africa. The acquisitions are
dispossessing millions of Africans of their land, to make way for
expansive forestry and mineral projects and plantations…”“The global
report shows the scale of the issue as never before: three-quarters of
Africa’s population and two-thirds of the landscape are at risk,” says
Andy White, who coordinates the RRI.” “[I]nternational efforts at
sustainable development are also threatening these areas.”

[22] ^^ Greenpeace, Patents on Life,
“A dangerous wave of privatization of all biological diversity is
presently taking place under the label of ‘intellectual property
rights’, i.e. patenting of plants, animals and individual parts of DNA”.

[37] ^^REDD Monitor, "News from the Conference of Polluters"
(Durban, COP 17). Executive secretary to the UNFCCC, Christiana
Figueres, told delegates gathered at Forest Day on 4 December, that “The
governments of the world are writing a global business plan for the
planet, [...] and REDD is its spiritual core.”

[46] ^^ Mugo Mugo , Patrick, "Africa for Sale: The Land Grab Landmine".
“Professor Noble, a research associate in food security and community
development, blames the land rush on the increasing demand to acquire
fertile land by a corporate global minority seeking bio-fuel crops and
the new frontier; the need for carbon credits has now turned into a
lucrative business.”

[47] ^^
“Existing large-scale plantations in Niassa and Nampula are also
taking advantage of REDD+ and the Clean Development Mechanism, by
seeking to certify the plantations as carbon sinks.” International
Institute for Environment and Development, Nhantumbo, Isilda, "REDD+ in Mozambique: new opportunity for land grabbers?"

[48] ^^ Rights and Resources International, "African land grabs hinder sustainable development".
“Of the 203 million hectares of land deals reported worldwide between
2000 and 2010, two-thirds were in Africa. The acquisitions are
dispossessing millions of Africans of their land, to make way for
expansive forestry and mineral projects and plantations…”“The global
report shows the scale of the issue as never before: three-quarters of
Africa’s population and two-thirds of the landscape are at risk,” says
Andy White, who coordinates the RRI.” “But international efforts at
sustainable development are also threatening these areas. Biofuels are
made from crops that are often planted on former forest or marsh land,
and carbon-offset projects can result in the eviction of inhabitants of
wooded areas that are bought up in exchange for carbon credits. Although
the official carbon market made little progress in last year’s United
Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, the voluntary
carbon market is still dispossessing local custodians of their lands.
For example, Green Resources, a forestry company based in Oslo, has
bought up hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests in Mozambique,
threatening the food security and livelihoods of local populations by
denying them access to their traditional lands and food sources. The
company has also expanded to Uganda, Tanzania and southern Sudan. A
Dutch firm’s carbon-offset project in Uganda’s Mount Elgon National Park
became unmarketable after sustained conflict with local farmers who
contest the group’s right to the land.”

[49] ^^
“REDD+ is now driving a race for land in Mozambique…The map below
represents areas where a company with British capital wants to ‘invest’
in REDD+ projects. The total area identified is 150 000 Km2, equivalent
to 15 million ha or 19% of the country’s surface. The selection of areas
for this private ‘investment’ was based on the proposed REDD+ pilots…
Am I witnessing the creation of generations of landless people in
Mozambique and Africa in general?” International Institute for
Environment and Development, Nhantumbo, Isilda, "REDD+ in Mozambique: new opportunity for land grabbers?"

[50] ^^
McAfee, Kathleen, The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem
Services Markets. “Application in international conservation policy of
the market model, in which profit incentives depend upon differential
opportunity costs, will entail a net upward redistribution of wealth
from poorer to wealthier classes and from rural regions to distant
centres of capital accumulation, mainly in the global North.”

Bracking, Sarah, "How
do Investors Value Environmental Harm/Care? Private Equity Funds,
Development Finance Institutions and the Partial Financialization of
Nature-based Industries". “Private equity funds, mostly domiciled in
secrecy jurisdictions, are dominant investors in the resource-based
economies of Africa. Some of the investments that these funds make have
been speculative and based on perceived high-value ‘futures’ in
biodiversity, bio-fuels and land, carbon capture or strategic minerals.
However, private equity funds are also heavily invested in mining,
energy and infrastructure, which also generate wealth from the non-human
world; ‘old’ markets alongside the ‘new’ markets for discovered
nature-based commodities…[T]hese calculative devices assist in
legitimizing private equity funds as institutional leaders in
pre-existing power structures which exploit natural resources in Africa
for the benefit of money-holders. These propositions roughly correspond
to the technical, empirical and theoretical dimensions of a
socio-technical arrangement applying to nature-based accumulation,
which, overall, performs a political process of financialization.”

[51] ^^
“The mere prospect of deforestation credits being recognized in a new
US climate bill has been enough to spark a REDD land grab in Central
Africa.” Point Carbon, "Firms Targets US Buyers with African REDD
credits", 20 July 2009, http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.1166150

"Massive carbon scam alleged in Liberia".
“Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf established a commission
investigate a proposed forest carbon credit deal between the West
African nation’s Forest Development Authority (FDA) and UK-based Carbon
Harvesting Corporation, reports Global Witness… which aimed to secure
around a fifth of Liberia’s total forest area — 400,000 hectares — in a
forest carbon concession. Police in London arrested Mike Foster, CEO of
Carbon Harvesting Corporation, last week.”

[58] ^^ Brunner, Keith, UN Intersessional Report: How will the Green Economy affect women?
The “green economy”… will exacerbate already growing gender violence,
urban migration and loss of traditional skills and knowledge amongst
women, with women in the Global South being hit the hardest.” According
to Isis Alvarez of the Global Forest Coalition, “Biodiversity and the
environment turned into marketable goods seems to be the current
approach to conservation. And markets necessarily need privatization.
But what are the consequences for women, if a resource which used to be
accessible is now privatized? Women usually provide their families with
key resources for their livelihoods, such as fuelwood, medicinal plants,
fodder, food, nuts, they collect seeds, so biodiversity means
everything to them, as they depend on the non-monetary benefits of
biodiversity… [In] the majority of Payment for Ecosystem Services
schemes, such as forest carbon schemes under the Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and forest Degradation program, men often negotiate the
deals, and women, due to language skills and other reasons, are left out
of the process. Women cannot assume the high costs of certifying
forests and other ecosystems through these schemes. [Furthermore], when
forest-dependent peoples are excluded from traditional territories due
to newly implemented conservation zones, it is often the women-
especially single women- who must move to the cities to find work, which
can mean prostitution in some areas.”

“Over 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found within
Indigenous peoples’ lands and territories Indigenous peoples represent
approximately 350 million individuals in the world and make up
approximately 90% of the world’s cultural diversity. We use our highly
specialized, traditional knowledge to care for and conserve the
interconnected web or ‘Circle of Life’ known as ‘biodiversity.’” Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism.